Deathwalking with Diana:
Shamanic Dreams & Visions of a Resurrected Grail Myth
by Maureen B. Roberts, PhD
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Like so many others, I was drawn deeply and with powerful emotion into the tragedy of Princess Diana's death. Her sudden yet perhaps timely ending, which was simultaneously her transposition to a new level of significance and power, touched a nerve-ending in the collective psyche at a time when we have been unconsciously, if not consciously, clamouring for a more human myth, one that will help fill the empty space left by the failure of organized religion and in so doing displace the waning dominant of bleak impersonality and secular detachment. What we are witnessing in this crucial, transitional time for the Western psyche is no less than the reawakening of the Grail myth at a new level of consciousness. As a Celtic shaman, I was deeply moved by the vision that came to me - following several Dreams of Diana - of the connection between her and the Grail Queen, and by the later intuition of Diana and the reawoken Goddess in general as a new Lady of the Lake, whose timely re-emergence relates to the next phase of the incarnation of God (as the central archetype of the collective unconscious). The facts of Princess Diana's life and death are well-known to us all, so I shall not dwell overly much on them here. The thoughts that follow are a tentative attempt to come to terms consciously with what has undeniably been an archetypal event of tidal wave proportions. It has splashed millions, if not billions of folk emotionally and mythically - particularly those who are open to being so touched through dwelling near the ocean - the foremost symbol of the unconscious. Only those in emotional deserts, or in psychological graves, or on unreachable mountain-tops, it seems, have remained immune; indeed, many have been surprised, even caught off-guard by the depth of their personal response. The entire tragedy has, I believe, given further impetus to what Jung prophesied would be the incoming dominant of the emerging Aquarian Age, Eros, the feminine principle of relatedness. (Perhaps it's no coincidence, then, that the Aquarian Age, in one astrological system of dating, begins 'officially' in 1997). At the same time this event has placed, ironically through a death, another nail in the coffin of the waning Piscean dominant of patriarchal hierarchy and its distantly enthroned God. Indeed, a consideration of the Diana myth in the context of personal and collective astrological factors and myths throws considerable light on the complex interplay of archetypes and typological conflicts that, from the start, underscored the entire saga and eventually became ripe for eruption into outer disaster. Again, I shall not dwell overly much here on this dimension of the situation and its key characters. It is perhaps enough to say that the more we reflect on the entire tragedy, the more we are astounded to see how vast an array of myths and archetypes have interwoven, merged and overlapped to form a multifaceted and potently impacting drama, the emerging effects of which we are undoubtedly just beginning to grasp. When we are living in, forming, and being formed by a myth, we find it hard to recognize it as one or distance ourselves from it critically. (Do fish feel wet?) The mythic angle I shall dwell on here, then,
is based on two powerful Dreams and my subsequent reflections on them from a Jungian angle
and in the context of the Arthurian mythos of the Holy Grail.
On the night I heard about Diana's death, I felt as a shaman an overwhelming desire to be of some help to her. The same night, I received far more than I'd bargained for in that I ended up spending the entire night with Diana in a long and complex Dream ritual. The Dream took place in what seemed like a kind of neutral ground, or in-between place; it was quiet and supremely functional - there were baths, pathways, and towels there - it was something like an ancient Greek garden, but with no sense of heaven; just a low-key, peaceful place for getting done what had to be done immediately there and then. It wasn't like any other place I've encountered in shamanic journeying, but featured lots of off-white stoneware and buildings, and other folk wandering about, absorbed in their own business. The Dream was also more feeling-dominated than visual, but the sense of personal reality was overwhelming and deeply moving. I could never do justice in words to the powerful feelings and images in this Dream; they were complex, reassuring, and distressing, yet overall, something very positive was, I feel, achieved. Throughout this long Dreaming, I was very close to Diana and as part of a healing ritual, helpied wash blood off of her into a large white bath. I remember watching the blood swirl clockwise around and down the plug-hole, while at the same time we were talking in detail about the irreversibility of what had happened, and about the reality of the here and now. We'd also been talking about all this as we'd slowly made our way across the grounds to the bath. She found it hard to accept that she could not yet leave the place where we were, or that she was in fact dead; she was not overly distressed; more like puzzled, tired, and regretful; but the main focus of the Dream was on her healing of soul and body, and on my offer - not in words, but simply as something that happened - to take on myself her woundedness. There was no particular point at which this happened, but suddenly I began to feel physically badly hurt, weak, and acheing, as if I were recovering from a recent and devastatingly major operation. I looked down the front of my body, which was badly bruised from the upper chest area, and a huge, healing scar was running down my body. The scar was like a long clean scalpel cut - a thin line that was already closed up. I felt a kind of joy and wonderment at this, partly, I think, because - in a relieved fashion - I'd taken on the woundedness in a kind of recovery mode, without having endured the preliminary shock and horror of its infliction. I recall that this process - helping Diana wash herself free of blood, talking through what was now real, and feeling wounded - was enacted over and again in different ways several times, until there was an acceptance by her of death, after which I was free to leave her in peace. I can't describe the kind of closeness this all involved; it wasn't what you'd call friendship, or sisterliness, or motherliness; it was (for want of better words) an indefinable sense of oneness, sorrow, patience, and compassion. For the next couple of days, I felt continual grief and profound emotion, and could not concentrate on any work, but I also felt at peace and immensely gratified (on her behalf and to the mediatory shamanic 'law' of coinherence) that I'd been able to help out. Shamans are often called upon to lead or escort the dead, or to help them cross over to the afterlife. In the Dream I was, in this sense, being called upon to help a suffering, shocked and bewildered soul come to terms with death. As Mircea Eliade notes, the shaman is vital when the dead person is reluctant to forsake the realm of the living, or when the deceased finds it too hard to journey alone to the beyond. (1) Here, only the shaman possesses the power of the psychopomp, or soul-guide, who like the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Anubis, escorts and converses with the dead. In the case of Diana, her mode of death was so traumatic and sudden, and involved such deep bodily wounding that she was understandably disoriented, weakened and confused when she found herself to be suddenly dead and in a strange place. Archetypal and personal, however, are not mutually exclusive, since archetypal experiences, which usually have a powerful feeling-tone, are well able to impact deeply on both the individual and collective levels. The Dream was, from this perspective, collective as well as personal; many of us have felt wounded in our Eros side (symbolically the heart region) by Diana's death, hence the wound I received was both mediatory (myself as Wounded Healer) and representative of what so many have been feeling and grieving for. Importantly, one of the phrases that quickly became attached to Diana in the wake of her death was "Queen of Hearts"; it seems that folk prefer to see her now as a Queen, a mature version of the vulnerable Princess who turned her suffering and disillusionment into compassion for humanity. Significantly, in the Arthurian Tarot pack, the Queen of Hearts - the card I first drew after having the Dream - is represented by the Grail Queen, who is described as follows:
The image is of her standing before a rough-hewn doorway in a cliff wall, behind which can be seen the ocean. In her hands she holds a large dish, one form of the Grail, out of which five streams of red wine, the colour of blood, are flowing sacrificially. This painting and description of a self-sacrificing, yet strong and compassionate Queen who is linked to the ocean immediately called to mind the content and intuited significance of my Dream. It would seem, on reflection, that the old Arthurian myth
of the Grail King, who is wounded because of the illness of the land, which has become the
Wasteland, is being superseded by a Grail Queen myth, personified as Diana. For whereas
the Grail King retreats to his Castle in his wounded state, the Grail Queen does not, but
instead transforms her pain into the healing of others. This intuited inference of Diana
as Grail Queen is not, of course, based not on her literal measuring up to the latter,
although the genuinely compassionate qualities she possessed were a necessary magnet for
the archetype she attracted.
Reflecting several days later on the Dream, I was moved by two key images: the blood spiralling clockwise into the bath, and my own woundedness. The first image resonates with the symbolism of the alchemical bath in which takes place a cyclic transformation, an alternating descent and ascent through which the opposites, imaged as red (male) and white (female) are united (3). The image also connects with a Medieval alchemy picture I have of Christ, a symbol of the wholeness and woundedness of the divine Self, sitting in the round bath of life, flanked on either side by the alchemical King and Queen, and the Sun and Moon, and pierced through the side with a spear. From the wound, blood pours into the bath, while from the upper right corner, from a wine press, wine flows into the bath. I am reminded here of Jung's comments late in life about death, when he suggested that it was a mysterium coniunctionis, a marriage, or union through which the soul finally regains its lost wholeness. The alchemical union of red and white (King and Queen) and the energy of the circulatio, or cyclic path of transformation, appear in my Dream in the guise of the spiralling blood in the white bath. Simultaneously, the bath is the alchemical vessel of transformation as another form of the Grail. A closer look at the Grail's symbolism and significance, then, will add further insight into the significance of the Dream. There is surely no more potent and enduring
legend than that of the Holy Grail, for it embodies basic mythic principles that remain
perpetually relevant, yet in order to do so must be reinterpreted anew in each age. Its
elusiveness and mystery reflect the constant objective of the Grail quest: the attainment
of a distant ideal representing inner wholeness and oneness with the divine. The link between Joseph of Arimathea, the Grail and an early Christian community at Glastonbury exists in a work written in about 1200 by Robert de Boron, A French knight. Here the Grail as a dish or vessel from which Christ ate the Passover feast is connected with a bleeding lance, which several early writers identify as the lance which pierced Christ's side on the Cross. Several elements remain constant in the myth: the Wounded King, who has been stricken with his own sword or lance, his realm, the Waste Land, which has been rendered infertile through the wounding of the King; the Question which must be asked by the hero in order to heal the King and his realm, and the hardship and suffering which must be overcome in the search for the Grail. An exploration of the Grail myth from the perspective of the alchemical archetype of the Wounded Healer, which involves the repeated association of the Grail with the shedding of blood, can aid in an appreciation of the significance of the Grail as a uniting and healing symbol. The form of the Grail itself varies throughout different texts. It may be a dish, a cup, a stone or a jewel. In the strikingly alchemical Grail text, Wolfram's German Parzifal, written in 1207, the Grail is not a vessel but rather a pure stone exiled from Paradise which is imaged as an emerald, one of the many symbols of the Philosophers' Stone, which Jung in his elaborate studies of alchemy equates symbolically with the divine centre of the psyche, the Self. In Parzifal the Grail stone imparts life to the Phoenix - another symbol of the Stone - (4) and its ability to cure sickness is the key to understanding the significance of the Grail's power to heal. Chretien de Troyes' 12th century French text, Perceval:The Story of the Grail, is the first Arthurian tale in which the Grail, the lance, the Wounded Healer and the Grail Castle appear, and initially they are devoid of specifically Christian reference. In the tale, the newly knighted 'Holy Fool' Perceval arrives at the castle of a wounded nobleman, the Fisher King, who gives him a golden sword, which symbolizes the innocence of an immature self as yet unfallen into inner division. In the house of the Wounded King, Perceval witnesses a strange procession consisting of a white lance that bleeds, a girl carrying a golden "grail", followed by a girl carrying a silver plate. That the Grail is always carried by a girl in the Arthurian tales implies the necessity of the feminine as the mediatrix of the Grail mystery. Perceval desires to understand these symbols and is determined to discover why the lance bleeds and where the Grail belongs. As indicative of his deep instinct for the uniting of the opposites, he repeatedly contemplates and encounters the union of red and white (a theme of my Dream) - alchemical symbols of Mercurius as the uniting of masculine and feminine, spirit and matter in the androgynous Self - and in one moving scene encounters a wounded bird and becomes lost in the vision of its blood on the snow. Meanwhile, Arthur's nephew Gawain also goes in search of the Bleeding Lance, and comes to the Grail castle but cannot mend the Broken Sword of the Wounded King. The King tells Gawain that he will only be told the secret meaning of the Grail and the lance if he is "worthy to know such things". He tells Gawain: "If you can mend this blade and make the pieces join together so that the sword is whole again, you'll be able to know the truth and significance of . . . the Grail and the lance. . . ." Gawain, however, repeatedly fails to mend the sword and so never attains the uniting vision of the Grail. His failure to achieve healing knowledge is evident in his lack of understanding of the strongly alchemical vision that comes to him. In this vision the lance bleeds into a silver vase which is called "the vessel" as synonymous with the alchemical bath of transformation. Chretien describes the vision as follows: "But no matter how much it bled, the vase would not be filled, for the blood passed through a large and splendid pipe of dazzling green emerald into a channel of gold, which . . . flowed out of the hall - but he could not see where to" (5). Again, there is a striking resonance with my own Dream, and perhaps an implied warning; in the Dream, the spiralling blood was escaping, flowing down the bath plug hole, perhaps symbolizing its return to the subterranean streams of the unconscious, hence the failure to integrate its significance consciously. Gawain's lack of understanding of this vision, evident in his blindness to the ultimate goal of the vase's contents , mirrors his failure to mend the sword, his failure, that is, to heal the division or 'dis-ease' within himself, hence to help heal the Wasteland. As for the similar theme and complex myth that is emerging from Diana's life and death - and it is one on which several other Arthurian and Greek goddess figures play key roles - it is perhaps too early to fully appreciate that yet, but this tragedy has touched many on the level which only an archetypal drama can, and a myth of simultaneous wounding and healing seems to be distilling. Part of our Celtic mythical heritage is the prophecy that King Arthur will return; this longing for a wise and compassionate ruler and redeemer of our wounded land is buried deep within our psyche, and resonates with the Christian hope for the return of Christ. But as Jung soberly foretold, the age of godlike redeemers has ended; the Aquarian archetype is the divine human who consciously wields and pours out onto the Earth the life-giving waters of the unconscious, just as the Grail Queen pours out the wine of knowledge from her Grail dish. Perhaps, then, it is not King Arthur as Wounded and healed King who will return, but more that the Grail Queen as a newly activated dominant of consciousness will heal the wounded land. But for that to happen, we must still answer the question, "Whom does the Grail serve"?" As always, we must all answer this question in our own way, and from our hearts rather than from our heads, since the Grail suite (in the Arthurian Tarot) is the one most attuned to the heart's intuition and wisdom. Perhaps both the mythic Diana and the Grail both serve the same - the wounded Wasteland - as did the Grail King as the wounded Fisher King. Perhaps the deceptively simple 'message' is that only the heart ruled by compassion can serve, hence 'under-stand', and drink from the Grail. As Yeats said, "No symbol tells all its meaning to any generation," hence the meaning - and content - of the Grail is inexhaustible. The Aquarian divine human must keep pouring forth for another two thousand years or so, and can do so only of s/he remains in touch with the boundless waters of the unconscious. In the Grail myths we find a merging and overlapping of symbolism as the central archetype of the Self surfaces in its many forms. Christ, King Arthur, the Fisher King, Launcelot and Perceval all typify the masculine Self as the archetype of the Wounded Healer. Their feminine counterpart is Perceval's sister, Blanchefleur, who accompanies the three knights, Bors, Galahad and Perceval on the only successful Grail quest. These four together form the archetype of the quaternity in its characteristic '3 + 1' structure, where the fourth - in this case the feminine - represents the principle that needs to be consciously integrated with the male trinity to complete a four-fold picture of wholeness. (6) Blanchefleur, meaning "white
flower", takes from a casket a belt woven of gold, silk and strands of her own hair,
all natural and personal things which symbolise the feminine As we move to embrace the era of personal and social wholeness, the feminine is coming to be seen in various retellings of the Grail myth not just in terms of its supportive role in the masculine quest, but in a counterbalancing and complementary development the masculine is increasingly understood in its supportive role in the feminine quest for self-realisation. Marion Zimmer Bradley presents an instance of this in the development of Arthur's half sister, Morgaine, the central character of her magnificent Arthurian novel, The Mists of Avalon (1983). Although in many Arthurian sources Avalon is identified with the Christian island of Glastonbury, Bradley with considerable insight maintains a distinction between the two as a reflection of the distinction between the Grail as a Christian relic and its broader significance as a symbol of the divine union of masculine and feminine. The Grail rightly returns at the end of the tale to its true origin, Avalon. Glastonbury, on the other hand, represents the superficial narrowness of what William Blake would derogatively call the "Negation" of reasoned belief, whose exclusive masculinity, embodied in the authority of the priesthood and later in the Protestant Church, suppresses its feminine unconscious, the Goddess who is not approachable through detached dogma but can only be intuitively known as the archetype of a deep inner wisdom, a lunar consciousness attuned to Nature and soul. The latter is personified in the Grail mythology by the Lady of the Lake, who in Celtic myth is an Otherworldly guide and teacher of Arthur and his court. It is this particular facet of the Goddess which is evoked in the last of a series of four Dreams (three, including the one recounted above, spent with Diana and a fourth with one of her sons). In this fourth Dream, I was taking care of Prince Harry, who was still feeling very fragile, emotionally vulnerable and distraught after the loss of his mother, to whom, as I could feel in the Dream, he had been extremely close. In the Dream, I had been 'given' the task of guiding him protectively on the way to school, and as we walked down a long, winding roadway, we were watched from the roadside by a large crowd of folk, as if we were acting out a kind of ritual procession. In my hand I carried what I knew to be Princess Diana's silver tiara, which was partially broken, and was shaped like a crescent Moon. In the Dream I was wondering what to do with the tiara - who to give it to or where to take it - since I knew it was not for me to wear or own. But I could find no-one to hand it over to and the more I mused over it, the more it seemed 'right' that it belonged to no-one in particular; furthermore, it was obviously no longer something to be worn, but rather had taken on another significance. In the Dream I paused along the way and examined the tiara more closely. It was made entirely of tiny diamonds all intricately woven together. Reflecting on this later, I saw in a trance vision of this diamond Moon-web the tiny seed-souls, or divine sparks of the countless folk of Earth, all of whom were contributing to the tiara, just as in the Hindu Net of Indra each gem reflects and is connected to all the others. It seemed in the vision that the seed-souls were embryonic forms of an emerging lunar consciousness, organic and holistic, symbolized by the Moon-crescent shape of the tiara, and I was again reminded of Diana as the Greek Artemis, twin sister of the solar Logos of Apollo and Goddess of lunar light, which symbolizes in the Dream the emerging dominance of Eros as the feminine principle of interwoven relatedness, respect for life and harmony with Nature. As I had done after I had my first deathwalking Dream of Diana, I consulted the Arthurian Tarot and drew forth, not surprisingly, the Moon card. In this beautiful painting are depicted two dark cylindrical towers, facing each other across a stream. Rising over the hills beyond, a full Moon encloses the embryo of a child, curled, like the Child at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, as though asleep in a Cosmic womb. In the foreground, a solitary Salmon, symbol of the most ancient Druidic wisdom, strives to leap the weir in the foreground. This card symbolizes the creative passivity of waiting, the kairos time of gestation before the Grail winners, Perceval and Galahad, reveal themselves to the World. Perceval, somewhat like Prince Harry, was raised by his mother, sheltered from the knowledge of aggressive, traditionally masculine skills, hence he has a strong and sensitive feminine side. Galahad, a parallel perhaps to Prince William, was raised in seclusion from the courtly realm of Camelot and was similarly a gentle, introspective and reverent soul. Launcelot, caught as was Prince Charles between the love of two women, Elaine, the suffering and devoted mother of his child, and Guinevere, another man's wife for whose adulterous love he forsook Elaine, just as Charles abandoned Diana, is raised by the Lady of the Lake, and as a flawed and fallen hero, is worldly wise in the ways of war and courtly traditions. Wonder again at how our Celtic myths resonate and abound in this great contemporary archetypal drama! Ironically, it is Diana who, after being
buried on an isle in a lake - hence having
The Arthurian Tarot description of The Lady of the Lake, as one of the Greater Powers, is as follows: "On the middle of an island in the middle of a lake sits the Lady of the Lake on a throne of weeds. She holds a sword and a book, while at her feet is a basket. Beside her is a crane."(8) The sword symbolizes her ability to wield the Logos of masculine insight in the service of the Eros of intuitive wisdom. The Crane, symbolic in Druid myth of the arcane knowledge that she reads and teaches from the Book of Nature, stands beside her as a soul-guide who, illumined by the Moon, helps guide others in journeys of death or intitiation to the Underworld. As Morgaine, healer and Queen of a sisterhood in her own right, the Lady of the Lake tends Arthur's wounds and cares for him in Avalon till he is called to return. As the dark face of the Goddess, she is the Morrighan, who as Washer at the Ford and Dark Woman of Knowledge, cleanses the bloodied linen of those who have been slain in battle. (Here I am reminded of my first deathwalking Dream of Diana in which, not long after she died, I washed the blood from her into the alchemical bath). As initiator into self-knowledge, the Morrighan is described as follows in the Arthurian Tarot: "The Washer at the Ford is the shape-changer, challenging and inviting all who approach her to change. She represents renewal, changing that which is static to that which is vital. Her katabolic action destroys out worn ideas, leaving room for fresh growth. Hers is a positive destruction, a clearing away of old growths." (9) As initiator and foster-mother, The Lady of the Lake is dispenser and guardian of a lunar, intuitive wisdom. Thus does the fourth Dream invite each of us to share in the incarnation of this archetypal Grail Queen of Avalon, the Lady of the Lake, by allowing the emerging dominant of Eros to guide, foster and 'school' the Logos, and through nurturing the divine soul-seed within each of us that it may grow and interweave with the countless other diamond facets of Diana's Moon-web tiara. God is still incarnating. The Divine Child, conceived as new collective life and vision through the death of Diana, is still gestating and still being born in us. The entire 'Diana myth', which has only just begun to resonate in the collective psyche, will continue to do so, I predict, for centuries to come. Diana started out as a fairytale Princess - the shy, rather naive Maiden who idealistically captures - or is, rather, captured by the Prince. But once this innocence and idealism was shattered, she became a tragically mythic figure, a human goddess, as was the Greek Psyche, and a mature woman. Her triumph is that she turned her vulnerability, as victim, into strength and compassion, as heroine. Marilyn Monroe, for whom Elton John's song "Candle in the Wind" was originally written, never got past this victim and "tragic Venus" stage. Diana, on the other hand, rescued herself from her pain, aloneness, and imprisoning circumstances and transcended them through aspiring to help and comfort her fellow human beings; so can we. When through the "I-Thou" of Eros consciousness, the heart opens in a paradox of simultaneous strength and vulnerability, weakness takes the form of a mediatorial power of freely offered compassion. One is then neither merely helpless victim nor invulnerable hero, but is rather the ambivalent Self, the Wounded Healer as "heroic victim". The Grail has before now served the Wounded King; now it serves the wounded Queen of Hearts, inasmuch as she is potentially also each of us. One of the key statements in Earl Spencer's moving address at Diana's funeral was that there's no need for us to canonize his sister, because in spite of her flaws and insecurities, she stood tall enough as a human being. If we make a saint of her, then we are admitting our inability to embody what she did: a simple concern for suffering individuals. The many levels of mythic meaning latent in Diana's life and death will, I predict, continue to unfold. Certainly we need to keep reflecting on this shattering event if we are to avoid letting it subside, unresolved, back into the unconscious. If we do the latter, someone else may be fated to live out the same projected destiny as Diana, until we understand that we all can and must learn to care for one another, regardless of race, creed, gender, or social status. The myth must now be made the conscious responsibility of each of us toward a world desparately in need of the retrieval of the sacred, and of its soul. More broadly, what our arid age is crying out
for is a rediscovery of the mythic stream of
Text c.1998 Maureen B. Roberts from, The Erocentric Vision: Reflections on Life, the Universe and Depth Psychology. Notes: Go to Jung Circle Home Page
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Deborah
principle as the
relatedness which binds together in harmony with Nature. It is she who makes a knight of
Galahad, who, like Perceval and Christ is symbolised by the union of white and red as the
lily and the rose. (7) Later, when the four are held captive in a castle, Blanchefleur is
required to bleed a dish full of blood to heal a sick lady in order to obtain their
release, and she dies as a result of her self-sacrifice. Again, one does not need to look
too hard to see the mythic parallel with Diana. Charles, William, Harry and Diana form a
quaternity whose feminine fourth has undoubtedly helped awaken the feminine principle
along with its attunement to feeling in the three males. It is surely significant, for
instance, that among the Royals at Diana's funeral, these three were the only ones to
openly cry. (A corresponding negative quaternity was evident in the '3+1' configuration
that featured in the car crash that killed Diana and two of her male companions).
